Lands of Katagma

Thoradin's Letters Home: Party Preparations Part One

Monsters in the Mist

2

DEC/16

Dear Father and Mother,
I hope this letter reaches you well.

Life has been exciting of late for Parse and I. I’ve finally managed to gather the necessary ingredients to cast the summon familiar spell Professor Nisivar taught me. Vetrix has granted me an owl bearing her divinity, that I’ve chosen to name Moltres. He’s an inquisitive fellow, and has already proved his value. The rest of my friends are well, Mallark and Lira seem to have cheered up as we’ve spent more time away from Oldden. They always seem far more at home in the wilderness.

After having acquired the honey for Linus, the jolly general goods merchant of Oldden, he told us he could get us in touch with more people who’d be interested in our work. One of the local human nobles, the Hemlock clan, is having an elaborate birthday party and everyone of import is said to be attending. It seems to be the sort of event we should be supplying to if we want to trade further with Human establishments. Linus had an invite, and here is why my knowledge of human royalty lets me down, apparently his invite was somehow dependent on the present he had bought. A bizarre custom if you ask me. Unfortunately for Linus, and us, it seems that the goods never reached Linus. If we wanted to go to this party, we will have to track them down. The best lead he could give us was that they were meant to be arriving at a nearby fishing village by boat, before getting moved to Oldden by caravan.

We chose to go to Roundwatch village first, hoping to meet his courier’s en route. If it came to the worst we would at least be able to find out if the goods ever arrived at the village. While staying overnight at a shelter maintained by the local warden we encountered a family travelling well past dark. They told us that they’d been forced to flee their home and had come to the warden to get help. As we couldn’t get hold of the warden, we offered to check it out as we were heading there anyway. We were all on edge as while the Mother and Father had been vague about the dangers they’d left behind, the children were insistent that they’d seen monsters. It seemed likely that a rotten fate had befallen the men we were meant to meet.

It was after talking to the family that it dawned on us that Linus was likely smuggling these goods in, for Roundwatch was by no means a trade port. Even calling such a small settlement a village is akin to describing an ember as a flame. I determined that when we resolved whatever had befallen Linus’s friends I would need to talk to my own to determine what actions we should take. I was upset to learn that Linus does not respect the laws of his land and wanted to bring up the option of turning over the goods, if found, to the proper authority instead of returning them to Linus.

After the best part of a day travelling we arrived at Roundwatch’s outskirts. The village was still smoldering from the fires the night before, and there were clear signs of struggling. We also spotted the watchtower the village was named after in the distance. I tasked Moltres with scouting the tower while we investigated the village proper. Whatever had attacked the village had left, and all signs indicated that they’d gone to the tower. Moltres confirmed this was likely as it had spotted shadows walking past windows but hadn’t managed to identify what occupied the tower.

The tower turned out to have several basement levels as well as the expected upper levels. We decided to investigate the lower floors first, assuming that they’d be faster to search. As it turns out this wasn’t an accurate assumption. In our exploration we found a large variety of loot, including a large stash of notes guaranteed by a dwarven noble. I’ve included one with this letter, I was wondering if our archivist would happen to know more about the noble named on them?

Eventually we encountered a number of fish like men performing a rite over a captured human. Seeing that the human was in peril we moved quickly to defeat the fishmen and rescue him. As it happened, the human in question was one of the contacts we’d been told about by Linus.